The Sleep of the Tuba-Player

By Ana Božičević b. 1977 Ana Božičević

The tuba wakes before the man. It’s a content animal:

having no word, for the moment, suits it fine.

It looks at him with a dun and smooth

interiority, as a glass of rum might,

or a worn number on an apartment building:

his hands, crossed on the chest, rise and fall with breathing.

In the dream, he’s ringing the bell now; climbing,

unlocking the door, peering into a glass.

The flat is empty. Is the war over yet? Or

was he here before the war? Soon, dropping salt levels

will wake him—

in tears, with an odd groove in his palm, as though

he’d held on to an instrument for hours.

For a good minute, he’ll be nameless, and when

a name does come, it won’t be his:

humming in thought the bright last name

he rang on the doorbell, he’ll see, in a certain

abrupt sunlight: he’d chosen

her, then—

to be able to call everything something.

Ana Bozicevic, "The Sleep of the Tuba-Player" from Stars of the Night Commute. Copyright © 2009 by Ana Bozicevic. Reprinted by permission of Tarpaulin Sky Press.

Source: Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009)

Biography

Born in Zagreb, Croatia, Božičević emigrated to New York City in 1997 and studied at Hunter College. She is the author of several chapbooks, including Morning News (2006) and Document (2007). Her first book-length collection, Stars of the Night Commute (2009), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards.

Travelers and messengers figure in Božičević’s dreamlike poems of shifting diction, narrative, and settings. Chris . . .

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